Totally new guy

TLE Promotional Products · July 5th, 2008, 04:14 PM

Hi, folks,

My name is Ted and I am in San Diego, CA. I am a brand new Promo Prods company and we are thinking of starting an embroidery operation. The main problem is that I know absolutely nothing about embroidery. I am wide open to suggestions/recommendations as to the size and type of machine which would be best for us. Our entire operation at this point is in our garage, so size would be a definite consideration for us. Any thoughts and hints would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Ted

SunEmbroidery · July 5th, 2008, 09:10 PM

I would start small (one or two heads) unless you know you'll have orders. One thing about running an embroidery machine in a garage is you'll have to be careful about dust and humidity. Any bit of dust in the thread path can stop the machine and humidity can cause thread to expand, thus causing the machine to stop. You would learn a lot about different machines and the embroidery business if you could attend the ISS show in Long Beach:

http://www.issshows.com/issshows/1237/index.jsp

Robert Young · July 6th, 2008, 10:47 AM

Ted, I would suggest you grow your promotional products business to a success first.. when you can buy a singlehead or two-head machine out of it's profits with cash... then I would feel comfortable getting into another revenue stream. In the meantime sell embroidery, by all means, just subcontract it out to another shop until you are ready. Taking on too much at one time is my fear for you... and with 90% of new businesses not making their first anniversary in this country, I err to the side of caution. Slow and steady wins the race so to speak.
To help you with your new venture have you joined web sources like: distributortalk.com? they have nearly 8000 members that are mainly distributors but some are suppliers and others are service providers.... this would, IMO, be a very valuable resource to you so you are not re-inventing the wheel. Hope this helps.